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TOPPS 1959 by Garrett Rowlan
On a September night in
Los Angeles , 1959, Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher Roy Face lost, and my father fell into the pool. Bill Jones pushed him from behind. We were guests at Bill’s house. The two men were drunk, fifties-style, alcoholic expansion in a country tipsy with postwar hubris. Vin Scully announced Dodger baseball on a plastic radio, his voice sailing over the city lights below.
I’ll always remember my father’s expression as he climbed out of the water, his anger restrained under tight lips. I equate that expression with the Topps’ baseball card of 1959 depicting Pittsburgh reliever Roy Face. He’s shown poising with his arms lifted and his eyes cut toward some imaginary runner leading off first base. I have that card. A glance at it brings me back to the night of September eleventh, a date later to live in infamy. Roy Face had won eighteen straight games that 1959 season. The Pirates had come to
Los Angeles . A heat wave, according to the microfilm of that September edition of the Times, had hit the city. I don’t remember the heat in particular, but they had a pool, the Jones’s, and I had gone with my parents to their house. Bill was a round-faced man with the sort of ruddy glow you get with sun and alcohol, and who bore a resemblance to the bandleader Phil Harris. His wife Rose was a husky-voiced brunette cut in the same mold as the actress Ruth Roman. They lived on a hillside on the northeast part of
Los Angeles . The splash, the lights below, and Vin Scully’s voice, the card brings it all back.
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